Just got off the phone with Lenovo's post-sales line to cancel a new laptop order, after a ridiculously long wait for delivery.
What happened? Read on...
Back in October, a mate of mine was looking at getting a new laptop, and I managed to convince him on a Lenovo X61. It wasn't the utilitarian design or the annoying nipple mouse (which he didn't mind) that sold him, but rather the cool videos over at LenovoVision, demonstrating the durability of the machines.
(You gotta admit, those videos are pretty cool. The guys at work love them, and while I'm not completely sold on them yet, the durability and the awesome battery life - 6-8 hours realistically under light conditions - gets me pretty close to getting their X61 tablet.)
Best of all, Lenovo were running their anniversary sale promotion, with significant discounts on all their machines. So on October 30th, we ordered one.
The expected delivery time as stated in the confirmation email was 1-3 weeks (1 week unlikely), which is too long for a simple pack-and-ship job if you ask me, but fine, that's what it took. This meant my mate was gonna be overseas, so we arranged for it to be shipped to me, and I'll bring it up to him when we catch up.
So November comes and goes, but no courier rings my doorbell at 7am in the morning (that's generally when packages are delivered for me for some whacko reason).
Checking on the online order status page, it now says it's 'scheduled to ship' on the 3th Dec, and should arrive on the 13th Dec.
Dec 20th rolls along and still no laptop - couriers may be delayed, but generally not by a whole week - so I check the online order status again, which still says 'scheduled to ship' on the dates as above. Useless site and bad expectation management - if you tell me a certain date, I expect it to be here on that date (Amazon does this better - they make sure the expected date is a week more than usual). Screwup #1.
Something was wrong, so I called up their post-sales line. No voice recognition (thank god), only simple number-punching menus, the combination which was given in the order status page, so it wasn't too painful. Once you get through and you get put on hold, after a minute or so, it gives you an option to leave your name, number and a short message, and an operator will call you back within 4 business hours. I've used this system before at other places, and I like the option - you can get on with your life, and they'll call you back when they're ready, so everyone wins.
The problem is this - they don't call you back. Don't offer the option if you're not gonna go through with it. Screwup #2.
To make things worse, once they put you on hold, after a few minutes, it forces you to leave a message - you can't choose to remain on hold. I'm willing to stay on hold and listen to the same crappy song over and over again to the point that I'm actually humming along; just put me through to a damn person already!
So I can't stay on hold in the call queue, and they don't call you back - just fuckin' great, it's impossible to get to someone, if there is someone there. Screwup #3.
The only concession in all this is that the number is a 1800 number, toll-free from landlines. So I thought if you're gonna screw me over, I'll screw you over the only way I can - repeatedly call that number. And I did, leaving the phone on auto-redial.
Then shock-horror, after an hour and a bit, I hear some random person's voice - I was through to one of the prized operators at Lenovo!
The guy couldn't sound more pleased to talk to me - monotone, quiet, completely disinterested and probably half dead. In fact, he was kinda surprised when I spoke, completely missing every single word I said as he woke up. I guess I should be thankful I didn't get put through to some guy at an Indian call centre, who gets so excited when someone picks up they speak at 100 words a second in a mesmerising rhythm.
Apparently the order was delayed until early January 2008 because of... guess, because you'll never get it.
A Vodafone SIM card (the laptop has an in-built 3G/HSDPA modem).
Yes, the wankers at Lenovo held the rest of the package at a warehouse somewhere, because they were missing a shitty piece of plastic that offers me nothing except some crappy introductory offer and more pre-installed crap.
Ok, so maybe if Lenovo didn't ship it, they'll probably miss out on a shitload of money from Vodafone, who pay them for the bundling. But is it worth pissing off all your customers who ordered an X61 direct (all X61s ordered direct were affected) just because of this? You couldn't just ship the package sans the SIM, and send out the SIM later? Or if you're really fuckin' cheap and don't want the extra shipping costs, at least send an email to your customers letting them know the situation! The online order status website is there for a reason too - use the damn thing! Screwup #4.
To make matters worse, the guy was reluctant to do this even when I nudged him in that direction - apparently the 'system' doesn't allow him to split up a package. WTF - you're a computer company previously attached to probably the largest IT consulting company in the world, and your 'system' can't handle split packages? And the guy sounded like he couldn't care less when I cancelled the order (because I won't be around to pick up the package in January 2008) - just another day at the office. He didn't try at all to offer me other options, or some other incentive to not cancel. Screwup #5.
Wow. I don't think you could screw up the ordering process any more for a potential customer unless you really tried. Of course, this small order is only a drop in the bucket for them, with their multi-million-dollar orders daily, so it means nothing, which really sucks for everyday consumers.
On the flipside however, because my mate still wants the X61, he got a friend in the US to get it and bring it to him when they meet up, and guess what - it's around a grand AUD cheaper over there, even after you add all the bits to make their X61 models similar to the Australian X61 models (larger HD, Vista Business, fingerprint reader, wireless-N supported card) - for some odd reason, it seems the US X61 models are all lower specced in their default configuration.
So yeh, Lenovo still gets his business, but it's disappointing how crap Lenovo Australia are. Do big companies necessarily mean bad customer service? Apparently so from my last few weeks.
Anyway, this'll probably be the last post before Christmas, and maybe the new year, so have a merry Christmas, and an awesome new year's, and I'll catch you on the other side!
P.S. I saw this book at Borders while Christmas present shopping:
The first two items, fine, but if people need a book to learn how to 'run multiple programs at the same time', Linux is screwed 
Do covers get checked by the author, or just the transcript, because I'd be embarassed to put my name to this. WTF.